Fox & Friends (blechh, ick) ran a special feature on the Ark Encounter (puke) last week. Ken Ham is thrilled. Wouldn’t you be, if your cheesy sideshow got a free national promotion on the channel that directly targets your target demographic of yokels and dumbasses?
Answers in Genesis writer and speaker Bodie Hodge was recently interview by Todd Piro from FOX & Friends (on the FOX News channel) down at the Ark Encounter. The resulting 3-minute video on the life-size Ark attraction was phenomenal. Bodie not only explained this world-class attraction but clearly gave its biblical and evangelistic message. How often do you get to hear the gospel on national television?
All the time, Ken, all the time. I’m an American. Evangelical christianity is constant low-level stench that permeates the whole country.
You can watch the whole thing, and the commentary from the low-wattage bulbs sitting on the couch. You learn that Todd Piro is really easily impressed.
This really is life-size of the ark,
he says. I don’t know what that means. The Bible gives some rough dimensions, that’s it, so they filled a rectangle of that size with wood and concrete and steel, does that mean it was real? No, it does not. Also, later, when Todd is asked what most impresses him about the ark, he answers that it was the Big Door. It was really big, you know. Therefore, the Bible is true.
Bogus Hodge is asked why the Ark is so successful (is it?) when religion is in decline all across the country, and he gives a dishonest answer: because it’s non-sectarian and appeals to people of all faiths, with even non-believers coming in droves
. That is not true. The Ark Encounter is extremely sectarian, building on an extremely narrow subset of Protestant, evangelical Christianity that likes to pretend that it is universal. It isn’t. I can’t speak for people of other faiths, but I know the non-believers are showing up for the spectacle of stupidity, and to laugh at it.
And honestly, how can he claim it’s designed to appeal to all faiths when he flat out declares that the purpose of the “Ark” is to show the message of Jesus Christ is true
? That nonsense is only topped by Todd Piro’s assertion that kids visiting the “Ark” will get a sense of history
.
Fox is the propaganda channel, and now they’re promoting the state religion. This isn’t good because, unfortunately, Fox is effective at poisoning brains.
One problem is that once someone gets pulled into the Fox News vortex it naturally leads to other scummier enterprises. You might start out signing up for a Fox email list or one from the president then quickly find your email being sold far and wide to increasingly less reputable charlatans. “The thing that makes me maddest about this is that it’s about money,” one correspondent said. His dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a year ago. “I guess Mike Huckabee has been selling his email to fucking everybody, including one list I noticed when I was getting his email set up called Beyond Chemo. They are selling him his own anger and a bunch of mushroom pills for all the money he doesn’t have anymore,” he said. “He’s gonna die destitute because of this shit and people belong in prison for seeing this as a business opportunity.”
Religion is already a potent brainwashing agent, seeing it team up with an effective disseminator of lies makes for a chilling combination. I’m beginning to think all the zombie movies and TV shows are reflecting a genuine concern that is in the air.
Perhaps not “free”: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/04/21/creationists-paid-fox-friends-to-post-a-clip-about-ark-encounter-on-facebook/
Holy crap. It’s an ad. A paid ad.
Fox News does not practice ethical journalism.
Yea Mr. super-christian Ken Ham neglected to mention to his rube followers that this was a paid advertisement. He is beyond slimy and corrupt, and I wish that stupid “ark” of his would just sink and get it over with.
Left a couple of comments on Kenny’s facebook page ,i wonder how long they will be there .
It is impossible to avoid running into charlatans who advertise pills that cure cancer, detox foot baths, miracle water filters, anti-ageing treatments, food supplements that act as medicine, etc. snake oil. If you don’t subscribe to Fox News mailing list, you will see those offers somewhere else online. If you don’t use the Internet at all, you will get phone calls. Thus educating people seems like the only way how to avoid being victimized by scammers. People should learn about topics like evidence based medicine, randomly controlled trials, placebo effect, statistically significant samples, etc. What annoys me tremendously is that schools don’t teach about these topics.
I was 15 when I first saw advertisements for pills that can cure cancer. At that time I didn’t know any better than assuming that they might work, after all, how could I tell the difference between real and fake medicine. Since I didn’t have cancer, I didn’t think much about these pills, so that was the end of the story for me. A few years later I accidentally stumbled across the book Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre, and only then I finally learned how to tell the difference between evidence based treatment and snake oil. This book prompted me to learn more about the scientific method and evidence in general and all the usual types of snake oil like alternative medicine, water filters, superfoods, etc. crap. By the way, I was immensely pissed off when I learned what exactly are those homeopathic pills that my doctor had prescribed me back when I was a child. Spotting snake oil becomes very easy once you understand the very basics of how science works. Yet you won’t learn this at school.
In my university, I had a classmate who was drinking expensive coral water and who once showed us the bruises she had on her back from some acupuncture treatment she had the previous day. Witnessing people getting scammed like this saddens me so much. Yet I don’t see how governments could possibly ban these scammers from cheating unsuspecting victims. They are skilled at adjusting the wording in their sales pitch to make sure than no actual medical claims are made. Educating people is the only solution I can think of.
Richard carrrier does a good job on religion, Google him.
jack16
Re. religious horrors, I just stumbled upon an explanation of “God’s plan”, but viewing it might scar you for life :-)
See “Cyanide and happiness compilation # 12 – life with Fridarco” at Youtube.
(I am using my phone and cannot copy links)
#2:
“Ethical” and “journalism” are words that seldom apply to Fox News. But I’m not saying anything you didn’t already know.
““Ethical” and “journalism” are words that [don’t] apply to [Faux Noise].”
Why would anyone want to see a boring rectangular Hebrew ark, when the original Babylonian ark of Atra-Hasis was a giant circular coracle made from rope and covered in bitumen?
@10, Toilets, snack bars, coconut-eating T. rex, and carparking are all missing. And it’s in some icky forr’in lands near the edges of the earth, probably with uppity brown people who don’t spake
englishameriglibberlish.Watching Paulogia it is clear that Bodie is dumber than Ken Ham, which seems impossible, but there you are.
So, it was a paid ad disguised as news eh? Isn’t most of what Fox does basically that, one way and another? Can’t decide whether Fox is happily promoting Ken Ham because people who work at Fox are as dumb as he is, or whether promoting this sort of shit is part of Murdoch’s strategy for dumbing down populations so much that they will vote for Billionaire-supporting cretins like Trump.
@jack16, you do realise PZ and the rest of FtB aren’t fond of Carrier, what with the whole trying to sue them?
@13 And let us not forget the allegations of sexual misconduct that got Richard booted of Free thoughts.
jack16 has been commenting here long enough to be fully aware of who he’s promoting.
Andreas Avester–
Your friend probably had cupping (which causes large circular bruises) not acupuncture (which generally leaves no mark because the needles are so thin). There is even less evidence for cupping than acupuncture…